It’s fascinating though, after seeing the barrage of ideas, words, and techniques flying out of NYC in every direction, to watch the aging Moebius silently, confidently, picking up his pen, putting it to the screen, and simply drawing.

My old pal Larry Marder just sent me images from the upcoming Beanworld Book 3—the first all-new Beanworld stories in fifteen years—and I was struck by how beautiful they were; even moreso than in the original series, which remains one of my favorite comics of all time.

The celebrated letterer Todd Klein was interviewed last week. Some find hand lettering tedious and prefer using fonts, but there’s no question that Todd’s hand lettering was a thing of beauty no font will ever match (though even Todd himself is working increasingly in the digital realm).

Still, after reading how he got started, I had to laugh at the thought of Todd on the job at DC for the first time (doing the sort of correction and paste-up in the production department that I would later do in the desk next to Todd’s in 1982) thinking to himself: ”Boy, this sure beats putting together instruction manuals for air conditioners!”

Todd lettered Zot! #1 and did the final version of the Zot logo. All but two of my subsequent comics, through Understanding Comics, were lettered by the great Bob Lappan. Since then, it’s been all fonts for this control freak, but I still consider the approach a work in progress, and there’s always a chance I might hand letter a (probably short) comic in the future.

I do still hand letter my rough layouts and try to make them readable for my editors. Even on the Cintiq tablet, zoomed in at 800 dpi to save my wrists, my technique is still the similar to what Todd taught me all those years ago.

TenNapel’s video covers many of the same techniques my generation was using 20 years ago—right down to the Windsor-Newton finest sable #3—but with a difference. Mr. T. is perfectly comfortable using digital tools (has in the past, might in the future) he just prefers the traditional ones right now, and his affection for them shows in the video.

Meanwhile, Simpson has fallen head-over-heels in love with his tablet monitor and has been producing some amazing art and discussing process over at his blog for a while. 100% digital and happy as a clam.

Both are talented artists. Both have set foot on both analog and digital soil. Now they’re settling on whichever patch of land is making them happy. And if they ever want to pull up stakes and go back, they know the way.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the role of criticism, specifically negative reviews of comics and how they tend to be received by the creative individuals involved.

For myself, I always consider reviews useful—even the hatchet jobs. It makes my heart sink a little when I hear other artists dismiss all reviews as irrelevant to their process. A common claim is that reviews tell us “only about the reviewer” and tell us “nothing about the work,” but I disagree. Yes, reviewers have biases. Yes, they miss the point sometimes. But there’s always some kind of information embedded in any reaction to any creative effort.

Take an extreme example:

Suppose you’re a cartoonist, and ten years ago you made a casual remark about some political issue in an interview or on a panel. A stranger decides they don’t like you, based entirely on this one remark.

Ten years later, you’ve just published your first graphic novel. You’ve poured your heart into it. It’s a thousand pages long, it’s everything you wanted it to be. And an online review site hires that same stranger to review the book.

Still upset about the political remark you made a decade earlier, the stranger-turned-critic savages your magnum opus, tears it to shreds, all the while clearly referencing a perceived political position which has nothing to do with the book, and is nowhere in the book. All negatives. No positives. All based on that one remark from ten years ago.

If you were that cartoonist, you could easily dismiss such a review. You could easily say that a bitter, biased, petty review like that is a classic example of a completely useless review, that it told you “only about the reviewer” and told you “nothing about the work.”

But you’d be wrong.

Because even in that extreme example there was a vital piece of information about your work that was worth paying attention to: The simple fact that your art and/or story were insufficiently powerful to overcome a grudge.

There’s an interesting conversation between Dash Shaw and Hope Larson about editing that’s been making the rounds. Hope likes editorial feedback, but I’ve heard other young cartoonists railing against editors.

I came from a generation of independent/alternative cartoonists that largely believed that “editorial freedom” meant “freedom from editors,” but I’ve always believed in the value of getting honest, in-depth feedback.

The very fact that I could have ignored their advice gave me the confidence to follow it. Whole chapters got the axe and new ones were created. I had the power to ignore them, but I also knew what Spidey said about “great power” and — like the spelling of invulnerable — it was a lesson I learned from reading superhero comics that I’ve never forgotten.

The Webcomic Overlook takes a look back at a 9-year-old list I wrote of 10 suggestions for beginning webcartoonists. Won’t quibble with the article’s conclusions (whether I agree or not, they’re reasonable points) but it’s a brief, funny look back at a very different time — literally the Web’s first decade (post-Mosaic).

Of course, this has precedents. Whatever you think of Zuda and their business model, I think they at least had their eyes on the ball when it came to design priorities. “Fit the screen/fill the screen” isn’t a bad way to go for page-to-page formats. Unlike strips, which can thrive in a terrarium of distractions, long form comics work best if all other distractions go away until the story is over. Sadly, both full screen modes seem to short-circuit keyboard commands, but we can’t have everything. (No wait. Screw that! Why can’t we?)